Field of the Invention
Embodiments of the present invention relate generally to food service and, more specifically, to a catering box with active climate control for transporting delicate food items.
Description of the Related Art
The popularity of social gatherings has prompted many restaurants to offer catering service, whereby food items are prepared in bulk quantities and delivered to such gatherings on demand. A social gathering could be, for example, a wedding, a birthday party, a corporate picnic, and so forth. Many different types of restaurants now cater, including conventional sit-down restaurants that allow some or all of the traditional menu items to be catered, catering restaurants that exclusively provide catered food, food trucks capable of acting as both mobile food vendors and catering delivery vehicles, and possibly other types of restaurants. With any such restaurant, catered food items are generally prepared in advance and then loaded into a food container for transport. The food container is then delivered to the locale where the gathering is to take place, and the food items stored within may then be served to guests.
A common type of food container used in the context of catering is known as a “catering box.” A conventional catering box is an insulated container that includes a set of internal racks upon which trays of food items may be positioned. The internal racks may be accessed via a door that typically latches shut to seal the food items inside. Once the food items are loaded into the catering box and the door latched shut, the catering box may be transported to the appropriate destination. Catering boxes of the conventional type may be transported via automobile or handcart, be physically carried, or may be transported via other modes of transportation. During transport, the catering box is often subject to a range of different conditions that may adversely affect the temperature and quality of the food items stored within. Such conditions could include, for example, wind, rain, sunshine, snow, extreme temperatures, or simply just the passage of time. For these reasons, conventional catering boxes are typically insulated, as mentioned above, to reduce the extent to which the temperature of the food items changes during transport, thereby allowing those food items to be delivered to consumers with a desirable temperature.
Conventional insulated catering boxes are thus capable of maintaining a slowly varying internal temperature for a given period of time during transport. Therefore, when loaded with warm or hot food items, an insulated catering box is able to maintain a relatively warm internal environment for a short period of time. The catering box thereby allows food items to be transported, within that short time period, without those food items cooling excessively. Although this approach provides one avenue for transporting hot food items, conventional catering boxes suffer from several specific shortcomings that (i) limit the amount of time that certain items may remain stored within such catering boxes and (ii) limit the type of food items that may be transported in such catering boxes.
In particular, the insulation provided by conventional catering boxes is capable of only slowing, but not completely stopping, the transfer of heat out of the catering box and the food items stored therein. Consequently, hot food items stored in a conventional catering box will, after a short time period, cool until thermal equilibrium is reached. Many people find consuming previously hot food items, which have then cooled down, highly undesirable. Furthermore, some types of hot food items, such as grilled cheese sandwiches, cheeseburgers, and other items that include melted ingredients like cheese, lose characteristic attributes once those melted ingredients cool, thereby reducing the desirability of these food items to consumers. For at least these reasons, conventional catering boxes only provide limited usefulness in transporting hot food items.
In addition, the sealed nature of conventional catering boxes, while facilitating heat isolation and retention, locks moisture into the catering box in the form of humidity. Over time, the humidity works its way into the food items stored in the catering boxes. This effect may be harmless (or even advantageous) when the stored food items are impervious to (or improved by) such humidity. However, many types of food items are considered “delicate” in the sense that those items are not impervious to excessive humidity and may, in fact, be spoiled in the presence of moisture, or the humidity may substantially degrade the quality of those food items.
Specifically, bread and other leavened foodstuffs typically absorb moisture, which adversely affects the consistency and texture of those foods. As such, when food items that contain bread are transported in a conventional catering box, those items typically arrive with soggy bread. This problem is magnified by the fact that many bread-containing food items include ingredients that are very moist, such as vegetables, which only add to the internal humidity of the catering box and increase the sogginess of the bread. The problem is further magnified when those food items are hot, since heated, humid air penetrates bread far more readily than cool, moist air.
As the foregoing illustrates, what is needed in the art is a more effective way to transport delicate food items.